Hellow 2026. (2 of 3) Oil on paper, 11 x 14"
“A living dog is better than a dead lion.” —Henry Thoreau
Back in October 2024, I gave two discussions about my book Making Friends With Wild Dogs: Reflections on Stuckism for its 25th Anniversary (pay for postage and I’ll send you a copy). They both went off fairly well, proof that there is no such thing as poor public speaking, just inadequate preparation. I am terrified of talking to groups. If I prep hours on end, however, and practice delivery over and over, I am usually able to rise to the occasion. Just don’t make that a random, unknown occasion. Then I will certainly flop. My tongue ties itself into loose knots and the butterflies make me a babbling idiot after the words finally break free. When I know my stuff and am prepared, I usually have some modicum of success.
Until post presentation Q & A. Then I am in uncharted territory, and if the question isn’t what I prepped for, then watch Ronnie become an instant un-expert. Which is where I found myself in both instances, post presentation. True to form, I flopped, giving horrible answers that have haunted me ever since. For some reason they popped into my head this morning while painting. I will address them here.
The first questioner at the art Association asked me if it wasn’t a kind of artistic arrogance to say that Stuckism isn’t for everyone. If one paints, then why isn’t she a Stuckist always, no matter how much and how often she makes art? Is Stuckism exclusionary, and who gets to be the judge?
I disagreed, but could barely utter a “goo-goo” for an answer. I had one, it just couldn’t get past the swarm of butterflies fluttering in a frenzy behind the tied tongue.
Sure, why not? Call yourself a Stuckist. Tell the world you paint everyday, that you go to sleep thinking painting, that you’re obsessed with improving your skill, yet know you’re stuck in mediocrity until the end, spending hours painting in the now and out of tomorrow. The next painting, and then the next, which is already finished before you painted it because you’re a Stuckist. I can sit with you for an hour and know you’re not a painter in the manner that James Beard was a gourmet chef long before he was James Beard the celebrity gourmet chef. He might never have amounted to world class success, nor even get paid a wage for his obsession, but he certainly knew he had better die trying. Art dabblers don’t take their art passionately like James Beard did his cooking, before he was famous. That is the most difficult accomplishment of any art practice. One must keep on keeping on. Adversity = Art because there is no other way to keep arting the new out of you without feeling psychological dissonance. Basically, without doubt, no art comes out. Painting is failure. Stuckism? Bah! Agree with some or most of the manifesto, but I will just see what you do by what you do have done.
We walk and our religion is shown (even to the dullest and most insensitive person) in how we walk. Or to put it more accurately, living in this world means choosing, choosing to walk, and the way we choose to walk is infallibly and perfectly expressed in the walk itself. Nothing can disguise it. The walk of an ordinary man and of an enlightened man are as different as that of a snake and a giraffe. —R.H. Blyth
I knew this questioner. He came every week to paint at the art association while I was “in residence” there. He would leave his painting on the shelf and come back the following week for the open studio talking about everything under the sun besides painting. He would paint pictures for the group to see. He would paint pictures for his phone. But he sure wasn’t going to paint every day for the rest of his life sitting on a chair in the basement. No daily predawn de(as)scent into living hell or heaven.
So if I dare imply that not everyone is a Stuckist, then what is the marker?
My answer should have been this:
You can’t be a Stuckist because Stuckism is arrogant and Stuckism is wrong. I am wrong. I can see myself walking like a snake. Thank you for buying my book. Good night.
The second question came after my presentation at the college.
“I guess what you’re saying is that Stuckists are just failed painters with an axe to grind?”
Immediately the butterflies swarming behind my tongue. For lack of an answer on the spot, I just shrugged and said “maybe?” with a foolish grin.
Now enter the very dead painter Pablo Picasso. And I’ll ask you to tell me why he is great. I know he’s great, and I also know why. But please tell me with your own words. Not Gertrude Stein’s, or Peggy Guggenheim’s or the dead movers and shakers from the 1950s CIA-sponsored international press… What is it that YOU love about this dead lion, Pablo Picasso? The painter parts, not his brush with fame, culture or history.
And you’re spot on, no matter what you say, because you’re you, and all art appreciation is subjective. I say that the lion Picasso was great like many living painters are great today, even if they are lone wolfs and living dogs. In 1945, not only Hitler and Roosevelt, but nearly every Allied soldier knew the name Picasso. He was the Bing Crosby of painters. Today there may be ten thousand living Picassos ready to make their mark but you and I don’t know of any, which signifies to me that we are both right and wrong about his legacy. Right that he was great, wrong that no living painter can be compared to him. Can we name a single driving-force painter working in Nigeria? She’s there. If there are humans with arms in Nigeria, then she’s there, painting like a wild Picasso. Our art history has never been much without the middle actors to tell tall tales, and they’re made up mainly of prejudiced academics with coffee table art research, which is one of exclusion of the many for the the elevation of a few. Finnish painters? None I know of. Who’s painting with Picasso intensity in Indonesia, India, Ankara, Anchorage? Whereabouts in China , a nation holding a fifth of the world’s population? I can tell you that there are a lot of living dogs being Picasso in these places, but we and the rest of the “Western” world will never know. This means that all great painters must end as Stuckists because there is no longer any lasting Picasso fame to be had. Prejudice aside, if I am wrong, tell me of a single world Picasso-like famous painter living today. (1. See footnote) The one that Putin, Trump and the majority of U.S. Marines have heard of like they have heard of that embarrassing blotch Taylor Swift. No dead Hockneys, please. No has-been comedians or President’s sons. And definitely no bed wetters like Tracey Emin. I mean painters on the level of Picasso, before Picasso was Picasso, when he was like James Beard the line cook—focused, driven, obsessed. You can’t. I can’t. Celebrity painting is dead, buried and gone forever.
My answer to the second question should have been this:
The Stuckist has no axe to grind because all modern painters will be buried in the Stuckist graveyard. Every single one. There just aren’t any living lions to dispute this fact. Christies may try, and believe me, their greed will find a way to continue to make millions in a market crammed to the rafters with golden-framed fabric art. I predict the next generation of Western painter wealth and standing will be set aside to those artists who gained celebrity fame (or infamy) in other ways—like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Jim Carey, Hunter Biden. However, Stuckists with an axe to grind? Nonsense. All true, modern painters, whether they define as Stuckists or not, are destined to be dead dogs. That’s why the best of us must die trying to be Picasso, wherever we live our lives to paint.
- The only lightly famous living painters I can name are the Stuckist cofounders Charles Thomson and Billy Childish. I know the latter by association, and he only paints on Mondays. Charles doesn’t even paint anymore.
